The Don's Deadliest Obsession novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: I Do, Don

The wedding in the Quintero chapel, the kiss in front of both families, her terms in the car, and a locked room full of photographs of her.

I married the man whose family killed my mother in a chapel with a loaded gun under every pew.

It was three days after the dinner.

The Quintero house stood on a hill above the Hudson, stone and ivy, with an orchard wall running down toward the river.

Brancato men sat on the left side of the chapel.

Quintero men sat on the right.

Nobody looked at the flowers.

My father walked me down the aisle with his hand clamped on my elbow.

"You'll thank me," he said through his smile. "You'll be a Don's wife."

"You hit Giulia in front of two hundred people," I said, smiling back.

His fingers tightened. "Your sister is at home where she belongs. She comes to you after the honeymoon."

I stopped walking.

"That was the condition, Papa. She comes tonight."

"Conditions are for the man at the altar. Not for you." He leaned in. "Keep walking, Serafina."

I looked at the altar.

Tadeo Quintero stood at the top of the steps in a black suit with no tie.

He had heard every word.

I saw it in his jaw.

He said nothing, and I hated him for it.

The priest asked if I took this man.

"I do," I said.

Tadeo's voice was soft and steady. "I do."

It was the softest I had ever heard him speak, and a woman in the third pew dropped her handkerchief.

"You may kiss the bride," the priest said.

I turned to face him.

He didn't rush it.

He lifted one hand and put it under my jaw, and his thumb rested at the corner of my mouth.

His hand was warm, and rough across the palm.

Behind me, two hundred people held their breath.

"Look at me," he said, so low only I could hear.

I looked.

His eyes were the grey of the river below the hill, and there was nothing cruel in them at all, which frightened me more than anything.

Then he kissed me.

It was slow at first, and then it wasn't.

His mouth opened mine, and his other hand slid to the small of my back and pulled me flat against him.

I heard myself make a sound.

My hand had closed in his lapel, and I didn't remember doing it.

When he let me go, my knees weren't working.

"That was for the guests," I said, much too breathless.

"Of course," said Tadeo.

The corner of his mouth moved.

"Don't get comfortable, Don," I said.

"I wouldn't dream of it."

The room clapped, because nobody knew what else to do.

My father clapped hardest.

The car was a black sedan with a driver and a glass wall between us and the front seat.

Tadeo sat on the far side with his hands on his knees.

I sat as close to my door as the leather allowed.

The chapel and the house were only a hundred yards apart, but his people had decided we should arrive properly.

I used the time.

"I have terms," I said.

"I thought you might." He turned his head. "Go on."

"One. This is a marriage on paper. You don't take me to bed."

"Yes."

"Two. You don't touch me unless I touch you first."

"Yes."

"Three. Giulia is brought here, to your house, tomorrow, and she is safe in it."

He looked at the glass wall for a second.

"Tomorrow," he said. "I'll send men to her father's door myself."

I waited for the catch.

"That's all three?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Then all three are agreed."

"That's it? No argument? No price?"

"Would it change anything if I argued?"

He had a point, and I didn't like it.

The room he gave me was on the second floor, at the end of the west hall.

It had a fireplace and a window onto the orchard, and a lock on the inside of the door.

He stood outside it with a ring of keys in his hand.

"Every door in this house is yours," he said. "The kitchen, the cellar, the chapel, my study. Go where you like."

He set the ring on my open palm and closed my fingers around it.

His hand was gone before I could decide whether that counted as touching.

"Except one," he said. "The last room in the east hall. Don't open that one, Serafina."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm asking you not to."

Then he said good night and walked away, and I locked the door behind him and sat on the edge of a bed made for a stranger.

I told myself I wouldn't go.

At one in the morning I was standing in the east hall in my wedding slip and bare feet.

The last door had a lock.

One of the keys on the ring fit it.

Of course it did.

He had given me every key on purpose.

The room was cold and dark.

I found the switch.

The light came on over a long wall, and I stopped breathing.

Photographs.

Hundreds of them, pinned in rows, each one with a date written underneath in small neat handwriting.

Me, at the bakery counter, handing a bag across to a customer.

Me on the bus, with my forehead against the window.

Me on the church steps, in black, on the anniversary of my mother's death.

The first date, in the top left corner, was two years ago.

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